Baking a Cake

As long as I can remember my grandmother has been baking cakes for various celebrations. She used to cater on a regular basis, making cakes for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. You name it she probably has done it. And everything is always made from scratch, from the cake batter to the icing and decorations.

Her cabinets are full of supplies such as cake pans of different shapes and sizes, cake tiers, fountains, baking pans, and a collection of decorating supplies. All of which she has used at one time or another for the different cakes and displays she's made.

For a quick and easy cake, she normally makes a layered heart design or the common sheet cake, topped with icing and a touch of some sort of decoration, usually roses or flowers.

I remember one day she told me about the first one she ever made. She was baking a circular cake, and it had cracked after settling. So instead of discarding it, she designed it to look like a tree stump as if an ax had split it. She thought it was ingenius, as did I.

The every day sheet cake is not one my grandmother makes very often. Usually she designs it into something else. For example, she made an “open book” cake for my high school graduation and a school bus for my brother.

Today she bakes a couple dozen brownies every week for a local restaurant and small cakes for special occasions every now and then.